Chapter 2 #2
I drove off, out the open back of the bay and through the parking lot, feeling his attention on me until I turned onto Charlotte Avenue and disappeared into traffic.
By the time I got back to the office, I had formulated Plan B. Plan A had been stealth and subtlety. Plan B was Zachary.
He looked up from the sofa when I walked in, his face hopeful. “How’d it go?”
“He made me,” I said flatly. “Two minutes in.”
Rachel’s head popped up from behind her computer screen. “He recognized you?”
“Immediately. And then he accused me of spying on him, which, to be fair, I was.” I dropped my purse on the desk. “So much for my career as a covert operative.”
“At least you got an oil change out of it,” Zachary offered.
“There is that.” I eyed him. “How do you feel about spending the afternoon in a Taco Bell parking lot?”
His eyes lit up. “Seriously?”
“The Body Shop is right across the street from a Taco Bell. You can park there and keep an eye on the place. Nick’s never seen you before, and even if he notices your car, he won’t connect it to me.”
It wasn’t the kind of vehicle I would want to be caught dead in.
But Zachary drove the sort of ancient beater that a twenty-year-old kid who worked a fast-food job would probably drive, so if the car stayed there for the next six to eight hours, hopefully Nick would just think its owner was inside working the dayshift.
Zachary looked like all this dreams—or most of them—had come true at once. I’ve never met anyone so excited about the prospect of spending the next half a day in his car. “What am I looking for?”
“Nick Costanza,” I said. “You were here yesterday, weren’t you? I could have sworn I saw you.”
Zach blinked, and I sighed.
“Nick is the tall, dark, good-looking guy in grease-covered overalls. You really can’t mistake him for anyone else, but he’s a few years older than you, Jacquie’s age, with black hair, brown eyes, olive skin.
There’s also the blonde who works in the office.
Jeans, navy polo with the Body Shop logo on it.
Ponytail. I assume she is who Jacquie was talking about.
She’s the only woman I saw there, and she spoke to Nick, and touched his arm, so it’s probably her. ”
Zachary nodded. He was drifting slowly away from my desk and towards the door, one slow step at a time. By the time I had finished briefing him, he’d be ready to cut and go.
“Watch how they interact,” I told him. “See if they leave together at lunch, or after work. And not just them, but Nick and anyone else, as well. Especially women. If he goes anywhere with anyone, follow them. If he goes anywhere by himself, follow him then, too. And try not to get made as quickly as I was.”
“I won’t,” Zachary promised. He had his keys in his hand and the other on the doorknob.
“Call me if anything happens. Even if it seems like nothing.”
“Got it.” He was halfway out the door when Edwina realized what was happening. She scrambled to her feet, tail wagging frantically, and trotted towards him.
“No, Edwina,” I said firmly.
Zachary looked down at the dog, who gazed up at him with heartbroken bug eyes. “Sorry, girl. This is a solo mission.”
Edwina gave an outraged bark as he slipped out the door. When it closed behind him, she turned to me with an expression of pure betrayal, then stalked over to her bed and flopped down with a dramatic sigh, her back to me.
“He’ll be back,” I told her.
She put her head on her paws and ignored me.
“You used to like me best. What happened?”
“He plays with her,” Rachel said.
“I play with her. Just not when I’m here.” I pulled out the notepad where I’d written down everything I knew about Nick Costanza, which wasn’t much. “I’m going to need your help with some research, if you don’t mind.”
“What kind of research?”
“The boring kind. Property records. Business licenses. That sort of thing.”
Rachel made a face. “What are you going to do?”
“Frivolous research. Social media, Google, that sort of thing. See if I can figure out what Nick eats for breakfast and whether Megan is in his photos.”
“If she were, I’m sure Jacquie would have noticed,” Rachel said, and turned back to her computer. “Where would you like me to start?”
I wanted her to start with the Body Shop, and told her so.
She started tap-tapping away, and I opened my laptop and pulled up Facebook.
Nick had an account, but he hadn’t posted anything to it in a year or more.
The same went for Instagram. If he were on TikTok I couldn’t find him, and he didn’t seem to have a Twitter/X or a BlueSky account.
There were a couple of pictures of Jacquie in the mix, from before she met David, but there was no Megan.
Not in his photos, nor on his list of online friends.
Next, I looked up the Body Shop itself. It had a website, with opening hours and contact information and everything, but there was no employee roster. I had hoped for a nice picture of Megan, with perhaps a handy last name that I could use to do further searching, but no such luck.
“I suppose I could call,” I said idly, and Rachel lifted her head.
“What’s that?”
“I’m looking for Megan’s last name. I suppose I could just call over there and ask. Pretend I’m from the Social Security Registration or something, and make up some reason why I need it.”
“I wouldn’t,” Rachel said. “I don’t think pretending you’re a federal employee is legal.”
Maybe not, now that she mentioned it. I sighed.
“A guy named Salvatore Gomorra owns the Body Shop,” Rachel added. “It’s licensed, bonded, and insured, and has been in business for almost two decades.”
“Can you spell his last name?”
She did, and I wrote it down and stared at it. It didn’t mean anything to me, and I couldn’t think of any reason why it would.
My phone buzzed. I picked it up, expecting it to be Zachary letting me know he had arrived in the Taco Bell parking lot, but it wasn’t.
Back from book tour, the text announced. Dinner tomorrow? I promise not to talk about Italy the whole time.
I stared at the screen, feeling an uncomfortable twist in my stomach.
“What?” Rached wanted to know.
I shot her a distracted glance. “Greg is back in Nashville.”
Greg Newsome was Harold’s younger brother, Heidi’s brother-in-law, and a bestselling fiction writer.
We had met over Harold’s dead body, more or less, and had had dinner once or twice before he’d had to leave for Italy.
I’d even met his mother once—indecently fast work, if you ask me—and he had been texting sporadically while he was away.
Pictures of Italian landscapes and Italian food and Italian ruins.
Now he was back, it seemed, and I was going to have to deal with him.
And I don’t mean that the way it sounds. He’s good company: handsome, successful, and interested in me. Everything I should want in a man, theoretically.
I just wasn’t sure I wanted any man, or at least I wasn’t sure I wanted this one.
It was no fault of Greg’s. He was pretty close to perfect.
Successful. Solvent. No criminal record, no secret families, no history of embezzlement or extramarital affairs.
A few years older than me, and wealthy enough to support me in the style to which I had become accustomed.
(I didn’t grow up rich, but eighteen years of being married to David had gotten me used to a certain standard of living.)
Greg didn’t even seem to mind my PI license, unlike certain people I’m not going to mention. In fact, he enjoyed picking my brain about the weird things that had happened to me, perhaps because they fed into what he himself did.
Rached hummed encouragingly, and I said, “He wants to have dinner tomorrow.”
“That’s nice,” Rachel said.
“I suppose. Although I don’t know. Maybe I should prioritize Nick Costanza, now that we have a paying client?”
“You can’t watch him twenty-four/seven,” Rachel said, “especially now that he’s made you. And you do need to eat.”
I did. But—
“I don’t suppose you’ve heard anything from Jaime?” Rachel asked, apropos of nothing at all.
I tried to tell myself that she hadn’t meant anything by it, and shook my head. “Not since the Newsome case.”
Her eyebrows arched. “That’s unusual, isn’t it?”
“Is it?”
“That was weeks ago.”
“He doesn’t owe any of us to show up regularly,” I said. “Especially given how he feels about PIs.”
She didn’t answer, and I added, “The only reason I saw him more frequently back then, was because Harold died. Nobody’s dead now.”
“I’m sure somebody’s dead. He’s probably just working.”
He might be. In fact, he probably was. Nashville’s a big city, and there’s usually plenty for a homicide detective to do.
And besides, I tended to mess up Mendoza’s life when I got involved in it, or rather, when he got involved in one of my cases.
They had a tendency to devolve into something that had nothing to do with homicide.
Like the financial crime that was the motive for David’s murder and the human trafficking that Steven Morton’s daughter had gotten caught up in.
But this was the longest stretch I had gone without seeing Mendoza since David died.
In spite of what I sometimes was pretty sure was flirtation on his part, I couldn’t talk myself into believing he was actually interested in me when he managed to stay away from me for weeks at a time.
I probably hadn’t even crossed his mind since the last time he’d seen me.
Greg, on the other hand, was interested. He’d made that obvious. And he was a perfectly acceptable option. Better than acceptable, actually. Everything I should want in a man.
I looked down at my phone and typed out a reply.
Dinner sounds great. Where and when?
The response came back almost immediately.
Fidelio’s? 6 PM?
I hesitated, my thumb hovering over the screen. Fidelio’s again.
Perfect, I typed, and hit send before I could change my mind.
“Done,” I said to Rachel. “We’re having dinner at Fidelio’s tomorrow.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Fidelio’s?”
“Apparently it’s Nashville’s go-to spot for irony. Who am I to decline?”
“Well.” She smiled at me, warm and encouraging. “I hope you have a good time.”
“So do I.” I set my phone down, only to pick it up again when it rang. “This is Gina.”
“It’s me,” Zachary said.
“Yes, I know. What’s happening?”
“Nothing. I’m in position. I can see the whole shop from here. Nick’s working on a Subaru. Megan’s in the office. No one’s doing anything interesting.”
As expected, then. “Keep watching. Call me if anything changes.”
“Will do.”
He hung up. I set the phone down and went back to staring at my laptop screen, where Salvatore Gomorra’s face stared at me from between two dog snouts.
Down on the floor, Edwina sighed dramatically from the comfort of her doggie bed.
I knew exactly how she felt.